Who Was Your Favorite Hawkeye that Things Didn't Work Out in Playing Time
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I straight LOL'd one this one! That was a dark time in Iowa Basketball!
Jason Price was my personal favorite! Just was too fast for his own good!
Northside Hawk
Well-Known Member
Two players who were similar to Price were Chauncey Leslie and Darryl Moore.
Moore in particular rose from walk on obscurity to being an important player on Iowa 1996 and 97 NCAA teams. He was probably second only to Nicholas Baer as far as impact from walk on players.
Jeff Hornicek turned out to be a pretty good walk on for ISU as well.
hawkeyesgonewild
Well-Known Member
Connie Hawkins he was on the freshman team.
MisterLucky
Well-Known Member
Anthony Tucker was another kid who couldn't put his drink down long enough to stay on the court. I think he finally quit drinking and may be still playing overseas.
VTHawk
Well-Known Member
Being a Hawkeye fan in New York as a 14 year old kid I really was not aware of how devastating these injuries were. It was tough to get real news of what was going on with the Hawks. Mostly it was whatever game there was on TV or some ESPN highlight.
I remember the '88-'89 season being one were we really had no bench and the starting 5 was worn out towards the end of the season.
That 1989 season would have turned out way differently if Michael Ingram were playing.
Especially if Ray Thompson does not get declared academically ineligible for the tournament.
We could have gone deep into the Tourny that year. It would have been great to see them play Georgetown in the sweet 16.
Also great points about the the '89-'90 onwards teams. They could have been something if Ray Thompson stuck around.
Yeah he had some big time potential I thought. Kinda similar to CJ Fredrick even.
Nooo doubt. He was exactly that. Underutilized. Thanks Greg Davis. Vandeberg was ok. He was a useful player for sure. But man he seemed to get 3 or 4 plays called for him to 1 for Smith and it just made no sense to me.
Fryowa
Administrator
I got no beef with Vandy but he was a fraction of the football player Smith was. Tevaun had an extra gear, got into that extra gear faster, and had ridiculous hands. He was the best post/deep threat the Hawks have ever had and never got the ball thrown to him.
Davis was an enormous skid mark in Iowa's Fruit Of The Looms. The only thing he ever did reliably was get you 3 yards on 3rd and 4.
Yeah and my beef isn't with Vandy either same thing with me. Davis had his play calling and system that just handcuffed QBs decision making. Smith should have had no less then 10 balls thrown his way a game. Half or more of them 20 plus yards down field.
SteveGarvey1
Well-Known Member
He could really haul in a rebound. But only if the ball happened to bounce right to him.
Seth53
Well-Known Member
Ronnie Lester. He stays healthy his senior year and we win it all.
Gerry Wright. The dunking machine was a key cog in Iowa's 86-87 all-star team. But damn, he somehow hurts his wrist, has it in a cast, and because of this his defense prowess and getting to the rim dunking suffered. He stays healthy and Iowa goes to the Final Four.
Gerry Wright. The dunking machine was a key cog in Iowa's 86-87 all-star team. But damn, he somehow hurts his wrist, has it in a cast, and because of this his defense prowess and getting to the rim dunking suffered. He stays healthy and Iowa goes to the Final Four.
atomicblue224
Well-Known Member
Kurt Looby, Did he play a lot? I thought the coach was at fault for not playing him enough. Yes, Steve, the greasy slimy hairy coach from Indiana, via Iowa, New Mexico, and finally fired from UCLA!
Northside Hawk
Well-Known Member
Remember though, his injury occurred in preseason, and the team shot out of the gate 18-0 as Ed Horton and Kent Hill manned the post and Gerry was just starting to see time on the floor again. He got healthier as the season progressed and had one of his best games against Michigan in his final home game.
What hurt Wright more than the injury was the way Davis used him compared to how Raveling did. Under George, he played power forward, even some small forward, and had much more freedom to get out and run on the break, almost like James Worthy.
Under Davis, Wright was strictly a post player who focused on rebounding, defense, and outlet passing. He did get some opportunities to get out and run but not nearly as many as he did under Raveling.
How he hurt the wrist, and broke a bone in his hand as well, has always been a subject of controversy. I heard four stories.
- He turned to acknowledge a friend who yelled his name and got his hand caught in the hinge end of a classroom door that someone was closing.
- He punched a wall after he found out he couldn't drop a class
- He had a weight room accident
- He got his hand pinned against the rim trying to stop a dunk in a pickup game
I believe number two. The injury would have occurred right around the deadline for being able to drop a class, which was usually right after midterms.
Number one doesn't seem possible. He had huge hands
Number three is plausible, could happen to any athlete, or anyone who lifts weights. But workouts at big time athletic programs, even then, were closely monitored by the strength and conditioning staff and there wouldn't have been the horseplay you typically see in common weight rooms. And no one would have been allowed to use free weights without collaring the bars.
Number four would have been more believable in September when the players play pickup games every day. The injury occurred literally around October 15, which used to be a holiday for college basketball because it signified the started of allowable practices. They wouldn't have been playing pickup games that close to October 15, the coaches wouldn't have allowed it.
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Seth53
Well-Known Member
I had always understood he got it caught in a door somehow. That was the University spin on it.
Yes, Iowa got out of the gate 18-0, but teams figured out our style and began to scheme against it. 18-0 morphed into 12-5, ending at 30-5. A healthy Gerry would have given opposing teams one more headache to worry about.
About the UNLV loss....painful for sure, but...they were the #1 West seed, Iowa wasn't. They won the preseason NIT, went 18-0 in their PCAA conference and were 36-1 when they played Iowa, their only loss by one point to #16 Oklahoma, on the road. They beat like ten ranked teams that year, badly, including Navy with Robinson. Yes, Iowa had a 16 point halftime lead, but they also shot an unbelievable 72% from the floor in the first half. You knew that couldn't last. Things evened out in the 2nd half and the #1 seed beat the #2 seed by three points.
Northside Hawk
Well-Known Member
A nightmare that has been re-lived many times.
UNLV switched from zone to man in the second half. And they making their move coincided with starting point guard Mark Wade picking up his fourth foul. Wade wasn't a huge offensive threat. Gerald Paddio entered the game and he was. He and Freddy Banks got hot and Armen Gilliam was his usual steady force down low.
That was a classic example of what I call compounding interest in basketball. They started making shots, which allowed them to set up their defense, which put us back on our heels, which led to more missed shots on our end, which got their running game going. We couldn't get out in defensive transition and identify shooters against B1G competition, much less this bunch.
It was definitely a tale of two halves. Everything we did well in the first half, they did well in the second half. Considering what was on the line it was the most gut wrenching loss of my career as a Hawkeye fan and that includes the 2015 CCG vs Michigan State.
Seth53
Well-Known Member
I'll have to flip-flop the MSU loss and the UNLV loss as the most gut-wrenching.
I was a student at Iowa during Iowa's Final four run with Lester, etc. I went to all the homes games and tuned in all the away games. I had major buy-in with Lute and the boys. With the UNLV loss, I at least had solace that I had witnessed one final four run in my lifetime.
Not so with the MSU loss. It was a perfect storm of a season...one that comes along maybe twice in a lifetime (Iowa had an outside chance at a mythical FB NC in 1985 before the Rose Bowl loss)....we were one 4th down stop, one turnover away from doing something IMO even more difficult than making a BB final four. Those final nine minutes reminded me at the time of the 2nd half of the UNLV game. C'MON HAWKS...make a play...please!! I was at the game and dejectedly told a buddy this is the closest I'll see an Iowa FB team make the playoffs in my lifetime. I was spent and distraught.
To add insult to injury, I then had to endure idiotic fans crowing about "the rose bowl, the rose bowl" for weeks. Pfffft. Nothing more than a fancy consolation prize. It was a nightmare to get to and a national embarrassment eleven seconds into it. Yes, I tuned in...for about 1 & 1/2 quarters, then I had enough. One play away from the playoffs, one stop away from true coast-to-coast program recognition.... to that debacle. Still majorly pisses me off. I've never watched the replay...and never will.
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Fryowa
Administrator
I'm kind of in the same boat. I think non-playoff bowl games are ridiculous now that there are 40 of them and the MSU loss is the one that upset me the most in my entire life.
That said, the rational part of me knows that Alabama would have rolled us 63-0 and they'd have been playing walk on freshman by the 2nd half kickoff. Iowa just wasn't equipped for that sort of thing and it would have been way more embarrassing than even the Rose Bowl bed shitting.
This is a good program and it's fairly clean by modern standards, but the SEC/ACC blue bloods are on a totally different level.
Seth53
Well-Known Member
I agree...it would have been ugly perhaps with Alabama. But just getting there would have sufficed for me.
Not unlike the teenager boy who has bad sex, once, with say, Raquel Welch. Yeah, it was bad, but they can brag about at least doing it once.
